Monday, September 26, 2011

Fail: Eggplant Curry

A cautionary tale.

I've used the AllRecipes Baingan Bharta recipe many many times over the years for a quick and easy on-hand-ingredients type of dinner. A few days ago, I got lazy and just chopped and stir-fried the Japanese eggplant I had with spices, added chopped tomatoes, kale, and a can of chickpeas. Go to add a bit of yogurt to finish it off, and things came to a screeching halt. Instead of a creamy sauce that integrated well with the tomatoes, I had a watery pile of vegetables flecked with white yogurt curds. Gross.

So, why the horrendous error? The original recipe has you cook the yogurt for 10 minutes with tomatoes, and you'd think the acidity and heat would cause separation anyway. AllRecipes commenters have also apparently stir-fried eggplant in this recipe successfully. My only suspicion is that I somehow stuffed it up by adding kale and chickpeas, though in theory these aren't super acidic so shouldn't affect anything. Is the lowfat yogurt to blame? I'll try this again with regular eggplant, no additions next time to see what I end up with.

For the curious, yes I still ate this over the course of a week. With eyes closed, I could pretend that the curdy things were cheese chunks and that made everything okay.